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Yooka-Laylee: Full Review
by José "Ze1598" Costa / Playtime: around 20 hours / Finished Main Story link to our hands-on impressions of the Toybox demo: http://imd-game-reviews.wikia.com/wiki/Yooka-Laylee Introduction Like I said in my impressions of the Toybox demo, Playtonic Games intents with this game remained the same in the final product: “Yooka-Laylee is an old-school 3D platformer, spiritual successor to the likes of Banjoo-Kazooie, that tries its damn best to revive the genre.” The premise for the game is also quite simple: the villain Capital B is trying to gather all the books in the world and because of that Laylee’s book gets taken in the process, therefore the duo Yooka and Laylee must retrive said book. Gameplay Starting with the world structure, it’s what a returning fan of the genre could expect: a hub world (here it’s known as the Hivory Towers) where the adventure originally starts and serves as a connecting point between the five Grand Tome Worlds (worlds). In order to access each of these worlds the player must find the corresponding Grand Tome (book), each in a different area of the Hivory Towers. However, as one would expect, you can’t just try any world of your choice at the start, they must be played through in a specific order. This becomes even more apparent given the fact that each book is located in a different area of the hub world, so to actually find the area a book is located in Yooka and Laylee must first unlock certain moves that allow them to traverse further in the Hivory Towers, alongside collecting the precious pagies that are necessary to unlock the other worlds once you find them. After a few tutorials on how to execute basic movement and how some game-mechanics work players find the first world: Tribalstack Tropics (please due note I will only mention the other worlds briefly to avoid spoilers as much as possible). This is pretty much all the Yooka-Laylee players know from footage shown throughout the game’s development cycle and marketing propaganda (though as we got closer to the release some gameplay of the second world had been shown and actually demo-ed at specific gaming events). And now begins my criticism rampage. Because most of what people had seen from the game in terms of actual gameplay was from Tribalstack Tropics, the oh so colorful and vibrant world, full of hopes and dreams that this would turn out to be the game to bring back the 3D platformer genre, the rest of the game was a huge unknown, aside from the knowledge that there would be four more worlds besides this one and the hub world. Setting skepticism aside for the unknown parts, after seeing a first world so pretty and good looking and watching Yooka and Laylee traversing through it would probably get you quite interested like what happened with a large number of people including myself. After all, what they had shown had its charm, one we hadn’t seen in a few years. To top it all off, the first world isn’t where the game’s most serious problems show themselves, or rather, they exist but the design surrounding you camouflages those flaws (at least until you fight the world’s boss, but that’s another conversation). While playing through the first world you get that collect-a-thon feeling, where you’d just want to explore the game to find all its secrets and at the end look at the sweet screen showing that you had collected everything in the game and had pretty much mastered it. However, while this remains true, during the journey two problems were apparent: bad camera (especially during tight spots the camera wouldn’t move where I wanted it to) and lack of control over the duo (part of it stemmed from the lack of control of the camera, not allowing me to see my surrounding properly). For the first world, these were the worst problems (though for the game as a whole they are a nightmare), because like I said, the first world is a heaven full of hopes and dreams, it even as a cameo from the amazing Shovel Knight! After collecting some pagies I returned to the hub world to expand the first world and then dived right back into it again (oh yeah, when you first find and unlock a world you’re only exploring around half of it. You’ll need some pagies to expand each world, something that is obligatory to, at least, have access to each world’s boss). When I got to the boss of the first world, it’s when things truly started to go south. To put the fight in a simple way, it revolves around climbing a slope while avoiding logs rolling down, make it to the top and literally break the boss’ teeth. Do it three times and you’re golden. The problem here, however, is the complete garbage of a camera and consequently narrow field of view, which leads to a lot of avoidable damage, leading to a lot of frustration to the player. Beating the boss however awards you one of those precious pagies (heads up, you’ll need 100 out of the total 145 to finish the story so collect as many as you can) and pretty much set your mind to return to the Hivory Towers to find the next world (don’t get hung up on completing the first one, you’ll need specific special moves to reach some collectibles, and these moves are only unlocked further in the game). After you make your way to the second world you notice a shift in design and color pallet. It’s not that the setting itself is that dark, but when compared to Tribalstack Tropics this second world is a shock in terms of colors used and the structure presented. This one begins with a linear path, which then leads to a lot of possible routes in the horizon just like in the previous world. The problem here is the lack of interest you’ll have: while in the first world you have an intense urge to go somewhere but halfway you get distracted by something else, here you’ll see some places where you can go and then just go the closest one, slowly making your way through the world. And then the rest of the problems gradually are ingrained into every inch of the game: terrible camera, clunky controls, bad overworld design and uninteresting/boring characters. Due note the following applies not only to the second world, but to the rest of the game as well: the camera just doesn’t go where you want it to, getting “stuck” in every object possible, depending on what movement you’re performing the controls feel either imprecise or floaty, the worlds feel bland and empty and, in result, the player won’t feel motivated to explore them at all. It’s also very much worth noting the characters are just boring, ''pun''ishing pieces of dirt who groan or moan every single word they spew (did you like my pun? The dialogues have a lot of those throughout the entire game). Mix all these and you’ll get Yooka-Laylee! Another attempt at taking advantage of player’s nostalgia and imitating too well both the good and bad parts of the old 3D platformers, not being to evolve from the “original” formula or correcting their mistakes. This game looked very promising from what had been shown of its first world, but the rest clearly can’t keep. I've also recorded some gameplay of the Tribalstack Tropics, the first world of the game, which you can watch in the videos below: Difficulty After reading the previous section, you probably already have an idea about two sources of difficulty in this game: the camera and the controls. I won’t waste any more text on that, so, not counting those, I’d say the game was just as difficult as I expected it to be taking into account my past experiences with other games of the genre. So, for you who are reading this, I’d say it’s at your average 3D platformer difficulty. Visual & Sound Design Visually, the game starts out as quite good, showing you a colorful world, making you excited to explore it. However, as you progress in the game all the excitement disappears along with the colors giving place to unimaginative world design, bland and empty areas not worth your interest. For the sound, I really can’t decide on a final answer: on one side there’s the dialogues, which make you listen to the characters groaning or moaning each of the words they spew until you contemplate muting them completely, but on the other hand the soundtrack is actually quite nice, so I guess I should meet it halfway and say the sound design in this game is fine. Achievements & Trophies For this section I chose the 3 trophies that reflect the most struggle and stress the trophy hunters can feel when trying to achieve the platinum trophy because these trophies are the ones that require you to play the game the most and conquer all of its challenges Verdict I really think 2017 has been a golden year for gaming so far, after all players have been treated to amazing games and experiences such as Nier: Automata, Dark Souls III: The Ringed City, Nioh, Horizon Zero Dawn, The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild, and a whole more which are too many to cite in this review. The point is, Yooka-Laylee is nowhere near any of these quality-wise. Yes, Yooka-Laylee is considered an indie game, which means its development budget can’t even compare to those triple A titles. However, take into account that Playtonic Games (the developers) is comprised of quite a few of the original members that worked on Banjoo Kazooie, and your expectations turn out to be quite different. Due to all the problems I’ve faced with in my time playing the game and how much I actually enjoyed playing it, my final score can’t be much higher than this. Final score: 6/20 Category:Reviews